Animal welfare groups in South Africa are pushing back against a local government plan to allow culling and trophy hunting to reduce elephant numbers in Madikwe Game Reserve.
According to the North West Parks and Tourism Board, which oversees the 75,000-hectare (185,000-acre) wildlife conservation area in the country’s north, the elephant herd has grown too large. More than 1,600 elephants now live in Madikwe, more than triple the planned capacity of 500.
“Population reduction strategies will include both culling applied together with contraception at least,” board CEO Jonathan Denga told Mongabay by text message.
Animal welfare NGO Humane World for Animals told Mongabay its offer to introduce contraception at Madikwe has been repeatedly postponed since 2020, and still hasn’t been implemented.
Denga also suggested the board is open to relocating elephants to other conservation areas. “We will not preclude any requests for live elephants should anyone come to the fore and they have adequately suited habitats,” he said.
In 2024, 75 elephants died from starvation amid the region’s worst drought in a century, sparking concerns over the park’s management. But the proposed solution to kill more elephants, which Denga called a “realistic” option, has intensified criticisms.
In a July statement, the board said it wouldn’t “be driven by emotions or agendas that seek to keep South Africa and our province in the economic doldrums.” Revenue from hunting and culling would be reverted back into the reserve, it added.
South Africa’s largest animal welfare organization, NSPCA, condemned the plan, saying culling and hunting should never be routine solutions for controlling wildlife populations.
“We are alarmed by the framing and normalisation of lethal reduction as both viable strategy and economic opportunity,” it wrote in an Aug. 13 statement. “Elephants are sentient, intelligent beings with intricate social structures and emotional lives.
“Economic hardship, inequality, and community upliftment are real and pressing challenges,” NSPCA added. “But these cannot be solved by reducing living beings to financial levers.”
The average price to hunt an African elephant in 2023 was $26,500. For comparison, hunting a critically endangered black rhinoceros costs $300,000, while lions and buffalos are priced at about $13,000 a head. That’s according to data by the Professional Hunters Association, obtained by an access-to-information request by the Daily Maverick and reviewed by Mongabay.
A tender published in May 2025 by the North West Parks and Tourism Board, which has since been recalled and deleted, reportedly advertised 25 elephants, two black rhinos and 10 buffalos for trophy hunting at Madikwe.
Andrew de Blocq, environment spokesperson for the Democratic Alliance, a ruling coalition party, said the current situation could have been avoided. “Elephants don’t grow from a population of 250 to 1,500 overnight. They’ve known for a long time this was coming, and they’ve done very little to nothing about it,” he told Mongabay in an audio message.
Banner image: Elephant in Madikwe, South Africa. Image by Debbi via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).
